Beeswax and Honey
by InkWorthy
Summary: A young woman finds herself caught between the choices of honey and vinegar, and must choose carefully; there's no backing out. A canon-divergent Candyman OC fic. Warnings for gore and heavy references to abuse. (HIATUS)
1. Chapter 1

_We're doing something a little different for this account - this is primarily a modern day OC fic and a largely original story set in the universe of the first Candyman film, because I had an idea and I really wanted to see where I could take it. I hope you like it._

 _Be kind and stay spooky, everyone._

 _-Inky_

* * *

She was a volunteer, and she'd said that seven times today. Sophie wasn't sure what part of her suggested authority to the point that other people went straight to her to ask what was going on; she had the baggy blue t-shirt and khakis everyone else in the group were asked to wear, and none of the badges the actual coordinators were wearing.

Maybe it was because she wasn't frightened by this place. Oh, it was certainly daunting - the roof was too high and light poured in from unexplained angles, causing the puddles that shouldn't have formed to glimmer and twinkle against their rotted surroundings. What must have once been great murals were washed away and faded, and all that remained were hints of faces, figures, their definition and detail lost to the ages. The place reeked of death, putrid and sickly-sweet, muted only by the musk of the stagnant water.

Still, Sophie thought as she walked down the long corridor with the rest of her group, there was a beauty to this. The architecture was rotted and decayed, but she had a strong imagination, and she could picture what it must have once been. Somebody had crafted this space, once upon a time, it was just that the story was long over. She placed a hand on one of the walls, tracing the outline of what looked like a painted eye. At her feet were short and fat stubs of wax - the third batch she'd encountered since they'd entered this old structure.

The guide had been mystified when they'd encountered the stubs - just wax, sitting by itself, littered with candy wrappers and rusted straight razors. It had been Sophie who'd identified them; maybe that was why everyone thought she was in charge.

"Candles," she'd said before, in response to the guide's rhetorical question. And they were candles - old wax stubs, dirtied and long past the point of any use. There were at least four batches of candle stubs, melted and burnt into each other, all pressed up to walls and damaged beyond repair.

Just like the rest of this place.

"So what do you make of it?" The arm was around her shoulder before she could realize what was happening, and Sophie instinctively ducked out of the way. Marcus looked disappointed, but she didn't feel particularly guilty; she'd made it very clear she didn't like when people did that.

"What do you mean?"

"This place." He gestured to the area, his other hand going into his pocket. "Hidden away for god knows how long, not even torn down with the rest of Cabrini Green, just left to rot? It seems strange to me." Sophie nodded, reaching up to adjust the tie in her hair. Her curls were falling out again - sometimes she wished they were just a bit more curly, so they'd lock together more and not be so prone to falling out of place. She wasn't entirely sure that was how it worked, but it was a nice fantasy.

"Maybe it was supposed to be hidden," Sophie said, and she honestly believed it. She had felt like an intruder the second she'd come in - like walking into a temple or a synagogue in the middle of service, it was almost as if she had stepped into a holy place. The lights, the water, the candles; they spoke to something that was meant to go undisturbed.

The word "condemned" haunted her as the two guides tossed it back and forth, even though she knew there was nothing she could do to persuade them otherwise.

"Must have been some sort of criminal den or something." Marcus's words pulled her back to reality, and Sophie couldn't help but wince a little. It was true - this had once been Cabrini Green, the housing project that had fallen to notoriously high crime rates and general mismanagement. There was no doubt this could have been one of many hovels that gangs and crime rings had chosen for their rendezvous. It still felt wrong, in a way she couldn't explain, to think of this place as just a lair. This had been something important once - otherwise, why the candles? Why the traces of murals, the candy? "It would explain why everything's gone to shit."

"That's a way of putting it," Sophie said, then looked up to the rest of the group ahead of them. "It looks like we're heading out." She was disappointed even as she said the words; they were supposed to inspect the place over the course of twelve hours, but it had been only six and she was fairly certain she knew the decision that was made. This building - this relic - was doomed.

She hadn't even seen everything."

"You're right," Marcus said, and the two started walking, "guess it doesn't take that long to tell this is beyond saving. Hey, you want coffee after this? My treat."

"No thank you," Sophie said gently, trying not to meet his disappointed gaze. "I have work to catch up on tonight."

"If you say so, but the offer's open this Friday, too. In case you're interested." She wasn't interested - Marcus had blue eyes and the same haircut that Malcolm did, and it would be a long time before she could date somebody who looked like Malcolm. But she didn't say that - for all the problems that weren't really his fault, Marcus had been nothing but kind to her since she'd arrived, and it didn't hold that expectant air of romance as reward. He didn't deserve to deal with her problems. So Sophie smiled at him and pushed a strand of hair from her face.

"That's very sweet of you, Marcus," she said with honesty, "but I'm really not in a place to be dating right now. It's nothing personal, I promise." He nodded, apparently accepting this answer, and gestured to the door ahead of them.

"After you," he said, and when they were both through he smiled. "And alright, I don't want to push anything on you. Maybe we can have pizza with the rest of the group sometime - if you're alright with friends. Real friends, not that friendzoning bullshit. " That got a real smile out of her.

"I'm alright with pizza. You're going to have to introduce me to some folks, though." That was the hard part of moving, of starting over; the whole world was new to her, and she was new to the world of Chicago.

"Not a problem. Does Saturday work?"

"Sounds good to me." They filed into the bus to head back uptown, and Sophie took one last glance at the strange building as they left it behind. The sun was setting, and the pink light left what metal pipes weren't rusted twinkling.

* * *

 _Have you noticed I favor characters whose names end with -y/-ie? Kirsty, Joey, Tiffany, Terri, now Sophie. Huh._

 _Chapter 10 of The Pin and the Casket is coming soon!_


	2. Chapter 2

_I feel I should say this now rather than later, but this is definitely going to be a bit heavier than my usual writing, particularly in terms of body horror, PTSD, and the subject of abuse. If you're not comfortable or don't feel safe reading about those particular subjects, I completely understand._

 _Be kind and safe, and stay spooky, everyone._

 _-Inky_

* * *

"Talcum?" The door shut behind Sophie with a small click, and she set down her backpack on the small table beside her. "I'm home!" The small _mrow_ from her room was enough to satisfy her, and she worked her shoes off before all but collapsing on the threadbare sofa she'd bought less than a month before.

Riding an Uber had never been so exhausting. She glanced at her phone - her _new_ phone, a phone with a new number and new bank account and new _everything -_ and felt an irrational wave of relief when there were no messages, no notifications of any sort of locator being turned on. She should have been over this by now, she thought, but even now Sophie couldn't quite escape the shadow looming over her shoulder, even though she knew perfectly well it was her own. Such was how it was, she supposed, opening her photos and flipping through them.

She found the one she was looking for easily. It was a beautiful shot - the honey-golden sunlight spilling through a crack in the ceiling, making puddles on the ground shimmer with tiny flecks of quartz in the concrete leading down a hall. Sophie smiled as she looked at it - for a second-hand phone, she had always been surprised at the camera's quality, and something about the image just soothed her. It was like she had captured a secret, a glimpse of beauty in a place that time had already claimed.

Sophie rolled onto her back and zoomed in on the shot. The path she'd photographed was obscured by the beam of light, such a vibrant yellow that it fogged the darkness behind it. She knew what was there, of course; it had been the wall with the most candle stubs, the most signs of paint, the wall that had seemed the most sacred. In the picture, though, it was invisible; perhaps, she thought, it was not meant to be seen through a filter, needed to be beheld in the flesh or not at all.

Of course that was nonsense, but nonsense was something she found comforting. Nonsense restored mystery to the world, gave her life a little mystique, a little wonder. It was something she had been sorely missing.

Sighing, Sophie turned the phone off and got off the sofa, finally getting to her room to change. It was still a modest space - bed, dresser, closet - but it was hers, and she was happy with it. Talcum let out another meow as she stepped in, hopping down from the bed to rub against her ankles as she pulled her volunteer shirt off, her hair falling loose once more and landing on her shoulders.

That gave her pause. Instead of reaching for another shirt, Sophie stopped to look in the mirror; her shoulders were still smooth and freckled, her skin still that shade of olive she proudly took from her mother, but it was marred. She knew it was permanent, and she'd had them for months, but the scars still drew a resigned, sad sound from her throat as she traced over them. They weren't red or white, weren't pretty colored lines that gave her character; the one down her left shoulder was a tangle of imprinted flesh, valleys of skin that had healed around the wounds instead of over scar mapped out her old wounds like they were pressed in. It crept up her neck to her jaw, spreading like branches from a tree across her face, not deep but far from invisible.

The scar no longer caused her physical pain, but they still hurt. They should have been a monument to her being alive; instead they just reminded her of Malcolm.

"Look at me, Talcum," she said, petting the pitch-black cat that had jumped onto her dresser, "I was once a great beauty." She was still pretty, she could admit that to herself; she still had her mother's proud eyebrows, her pleasant smile. But oh, how the scars distracted from all that; more than one person had jumped, just a little, seeing her for the first time. That stung.

Of course, the ones who had ignored them had stung all the more. Sophie sighed and scooped up Talcum, burying her face in his stomach.

"Do you think I'm still pretty, Talcum?" She asked, voice muffled by his fluff.

"Mrow," said Talcum, batting the top of her head with his paw as his tail flicked back and forth. Sophie set him down, and he trotted into the kitchen. Sophie finished changing into a lighter shirt and some shorts before following him.

"I saw a pretty building today, Talcum," she said as she reached for a can. "It was in the old Cabrini Green area."

"Mrow," said Talcum, rubbing her ankles again. He stood back on his hind legs and pawed at her calf.

"They're going to tear it down in a few days," she said while she opened it and scooped out the food onto a paper plate, "and nobody wanted to talk about it. I asked some people - somebody even told us not to go in there. Isn't that strange, Talcum?" Talcum hopped onto the counter and started eating; Sophie threw away the plastic spoon and started washing out the can. "I think it was a temple, with all those candles. Don't you think so?"

"Mrow."

"It's a shame it's so worn down, though. I would have liked to know what kind of temple it was. Maybe I could have brought a candle, too." She glanced over to the folding table that made up her "dining room" - a few spare wicks and lumps of wax sat waiting for her. "That's only polite, isn't it?" She set the can down in the sink and walked over to her makeshift work station. She'd been making candles for a few months now; it wasn't her only source of money anymore, thank goodness, but it was still nice to have the extra money when she did sell one or two of them. Two candles were already finished - a tall white rod with a yellow core that would drip golden as it melted, and a three-wick column about four inches tall, golden-bronze and vaguely scented like butterscotch and toffee.

Still three more candles to go. Sophie picked up the raw wax and brought it back to the kitchen. She only had two pots, one for cooking and one for melting, and she filled both before turning the old stove on and watching it grumble before sparking to life.

A bowl of canned soup and the start of three candles later, Sophie looked up at the microwave clock. It was 11:30 at night. _How long was I working?_ she thought, looking down at her works in progress - only one was halfway done, but they all looked quite nice.

It only took a moment for her to realize how tired she was; it was as if a blanket of quiet exhaustion had settled on her shoulders. She set about cleaning up in silence; Talcum was already asleep on the couch, and for such an attentive animal, he was nigh-impossible to wake. She envied him for that. Still, Sophie thought as she put the last of her tools away, she'd been resting easier lately; it was no longer a frightening thing to go to bed.

Nobody would find her here, she reminded herself, nobody would think to look for her in such a place. She was safe.

"Goodnight, Talcum," she said as she walked to the bedroom, and laid down without changing clothes. Sleep overcame her in moments, heavy and still in the hot Chicago night.

* * *

 _She was gripping a candle - not a candlestick, just a candle, tall and white and dipping as it flickered. Sophie's hand rested on the cold wall, and she looked around, but there was nothing but darkness around her. The light twinkled in puddles at her feet, soaking into her slippers, staining the hem of her long white nightgown._

 _"Hello?" She called into the dark - where was she? -_ _and was met with silence. "Is someone there?"_

 _A whisper, like the wind, answered from the dark in front of her._

 _"Hello?" She called again. She took a step forward, and the icy water splashed her ankle. She winced._

 _"Closer," came the voice, only a little stronger, only a little more audible. It wasn't Malcolm's, it couldn't have been, because he didn't whisper, not ever. Sophie stepped towards it, ignoring the cold, drawn towards its softness._

 _"I'm coming closer," she called into the darkness, and though she heard nothing she felt herself being beckoned forward. As she walked the candle dripped in her hand; the wax spilled down her wrist, but she didn't drop it. It stung as it cooled on her hand, settling into the cracks of her scars, dripping to the floor below. Still she pressed on, and slowly something came into view._

 _A brick wall, brown and old, loomed over her. Sophie held the candle to it; a drop of icy water splashed her wrist and she dropped it. The flame caught something below her; more candles, old and half-melted, burst alight. She stared at them before looking up at the wall, and from the flames an image emerged._

 _A figure stared down at her, eyes dark and sad. Another drop splashed her wrist, and in the fire's light it twinkled red._

 _"Sophie," the voice whispered, and the figure leaned forward. A heaviness settled on her chest. She couldn't breathe._

 _She couldn't breathe._

* * *

"Mrow." Sophie's eyes opened to Talcum's weight on her chest. She sat up and he leapt off of her, meowing in protest, and she drew in a deep breath before staring at the mirror.

No was, no nightgown. She didn't even _own_ a white nightgown.

"What an odd dream," she murmured, staring at her sheets, when her phone buzzed. She unplugged it and picked up, but not before checking the number. It was Marcus. "Hello?"

"Hey, Soph?" He sounded uncertain. "You know that last building we checked out yesterday, the one with the candles?"

"What about it?" she pulled herself to the side of the bed. "Did we miss something?"

"Kind of. Jesus Christ... what kind of sick fuck..."

"Marcus," she said, managing her stern voice even with the weight of sleep still on her shoulders, "please tell me what's going on."

"So apparently a couple people weren't too happy about the building being condemned, or us going in there, and I guess they tried to go in to do _something,_ but..." he drew in a breath, and she heard the audible fuzz on the other end. "There's... two people were found dead. Ripped open. They were teenagers, Sophie."

Sophie felt Talcum batting at her leg, but didn't look up at him. She just stared at the floor, gripping the phone, and swallowed.

"Were... were they there before us?" She asked.

"No," he said, and her shoulders relaxed a little, "but I saw a picture and... they want us to come down for questioning, Sophie. The whole group."

"...Okay," she whispered, "I'll see when I can get down there." She hung up and hugged her knees, looking to Talcum. The police. Her name on a police report... would somebody find it?

"What do I do, Talcum?" She asked.

"Mrow," Talcum said, tail flicking back and forth.


	3. Chapter 3

"That will be all, Miss..."

"Becker," Sophie said, hugging her afternoon shawl around her shoulders, "Sophie Becker." The officer gave her a dismissive wave of his hand, and she smiled at the corner of her mouth as she walked away and hugged her purse just a little tighter. She... really should not have been relieved that they didn't seem too interested in investigating potential witnesses. It was a terrible thing, a truly dreadful fate for two teenage boys (Jay and Devon she'd learned), but the part of her that was afraid had relaxed its grip on her for the time being. They'd barely taken her name down, and it was likely to be stowed in a paper file and forgotten on a shelf, as opposed to placed in the papers or some extensive database.

It was one less concern that she might be found.

Sophie bought herself a newspaper as she made her way to the bus station, and read the small article about the two boys over and over. They'd been torn from gut to gullet with an "unidentified" weapon, according to the seemingly disinterested reporter, and among their belongings were aerosol cans, a lighter, and a shovel. She stared at one of the photos - not of the bodies but of the crime scene - and on the shovel in particular. Something on the edge of it caught her attention, a strange lining that didn't look like mud. The entire article felt subtly off in a way she couldn't explain; all the facts were there, but she felt as if she was missing something.

That feeling persisted on the way home; it stuck to her like syrup on her shawl, clinging to her shoulders and seeping onto her skin with an uncomfortable stickiness she couldn't just brush away. Sitting in the back corner, reading the snippet again because she couldn't do anything else, Sophie squinted at the pictures, staring at them and trying to find just what she hadn't seen the first dozen times. It turned up nothing, and she folded the newspaper at her stop and tossed it into the first bin she saw.

Her apartment building had a long, winding and narrow stairwell; part of her always made a note of the fact that getting down was easier than up, and the doors were heavy and hard to swing, but the second floor always kept theirs open. She hated that her first impulse was to make an escape plan, a safety route. She was supposed to _already_ be safe.

Of course this part of Chicago _wasn't_ safe, but that was sort of the point. Sophie reached her front door - paint chipped, sign faded - and smiled a little, proud of her modest home for the moment. Malcolm, with his shiny uniform and his always-polished chief badge and his impossible standards, would never look for her here. Her own mother wouldn't look for her in a place like this; that was why she chose it. The door clicked shut behind her, and she locked it as she lingered on that last thought.

Her mother. Sophie pulled out her phone and stared at the screen as it lit up; of course there were no voicemails, no messages, but she felt the pang of guilt all the same. She wondered if her mom had given up calling Sophie's old number yet, if it even led to a voicemail anymore. If it did, she wasn't sure she wanted to know about it. It ached so sharply that for a moment she forgot her discomfort with the newspaper, and sat down on the sofa. She barely noticed when Talcum leapt into her lap.

"I'm sorry, Mom," she murmured, closing her phone and stowing it back in her purse, "I love you. I have to love myself this time, though." Her mother loved her, she knew that. But she'd loved Married Sophie much more than Single Sophie, and much, _much_ more than Divorced Sophie. And she had loved _Malcolm._ "Maybe one day," she said, turning her attention to Talcum, "I'll find somebody better to marry. Then she won't have to worry about me dying old and alone. What do you think, Talcum?" He rolled onto his back and she idly traced a finger over his fluffy stomach. He wriggled and purred in her lap, and Sophie smiled just a little. She scooped her cat up and stood, cradling him in her arms.

"Can you see me getting married again, Talcum?" She kissed his belly, and Talcum wriggled in her arms. "Maybe I'll just marry you. You already bum around the house and expect me to feed you, you're as good a husband as him." He squirmed away and landed with a light _thump,_ and she smiled, just a little. "Alright," she said, putting her hands in her pockets, "you value your freedom, I can respect that." Sophie pushed herself back up and paced about the room.

She was restless. The police hadn't cared, but she did; about the boys, about that _place,_ about the energy that had been following her around all day. She had thought the place was a temple; maybe it was, and they weren't meant to disturb it. Maybe those boys hadn't felt it, had made a mistake and stirred something even further than she had.

Or maybe they had known. She shivered at the thought, but it would not leave her. Had they _known?_ Had they felt the same weight in the air that she'd felt, the same strangeness that enticed and repelled her all at once, like the most lovely coloration of a poisonous fruit? Sophie picked up her purse again.

"I'm going out," she said, breezing into the kitchen and fixing Talcum's dinner, grabbing a water bottle from her old fridge and a map off her counter, "I need to see something." She went back to the door and felt a touch annoyed with herself as she unlocked it again. "Don't accept any solicitors or invitations to strange parties."

"Mrow," said Talcum, and the door clicked shut once more.

* * *

It was a strange trick of running from bus to bus and double-checking old emails and comparing addresses that had changed, but Sophie finally found herself back in front of the building. The bleeding light of dusk seeped over it from behind, and the shadows somehow made it look ancient, as if it had been here for all of time. One empty police car sat parked nearby, but nobody was around, not even reporters. Like vultures, the conference of reporters and investigators must have picked the scene of all evidence and intrigue. The entrance sat before her, patient and filthy. Sophie took a breath before she approached it, peering in and squeezing the front of her shawl a little tighter.

"Hello?" She called, and there was nothing; the air was musty and thick, and she swallowed. "I'd like to come in," she said, softer, "is there anybody here?"

She was met with silence, but the tension in her chest eased in a way she couldn't explain. It was as if an anxiety - the fear of being uninvited - had been alleviated; as if whatever was here had held the door open for her. She should have been troubled by such strange thoughts, and perhaps she might have once upon a time. But now, when she was already used to being afraid...

 _There could be an ambush,_ she thought, _but who would know I was coming?_ She immediately pushed Malcolm's sharp face from her mind as it started to form, and she stepped in, her footsteps echoing in the cavernous halls. She regretted not thinking to bring a light; her phone's screen could barely light the hand that held it. She kept walking, trying to remember the picture in the paper, where the bodies had been.

She didn't want to see them, of course. No doubt they were already in some morgue to be examined and dismissed; she was not optimistic for their closure, though she said a silent prayer for their souls nonetheless. Two boys, two dead boys, barely old enough to start being men. It truly was a tragedy.

But they weren't why she was here.

She turned a corner; there were puddles here, and she vaguely remembered it raining the night before as she prepared for bed. Her shoes were sturdy and her stockings were dry, but the moisture clung onto her cheeks and made her reach up to wipe her neck as she kept going. She pulled up the picture she'd saved, looking at it, trying to contextualize it. Further in she wandered, in what had to have been a spiral, accompanied by the sound of her own footsteps and, eventually, those of another.

Sophie grew still. The footsteps stopped. She felt the tension again; the air grew taut and somebody's gaze lay on the nape of her neck, patiently waiting for her to turn around.

"Turn around, Sophie," a voice said, and she drew in a breath. Not his, but _a_ him, a man, somehow far away and right in her ear. "You came all this way to see me, do not be afraid to look." Her hands shook as she turned with her whole body, needing only an instant to find the figure in the dark.


	4. Chapter 4

His face in the dream could not have prepared her for this.

Sophie forgot all thoughts of skeletons, of scythes, and even of Malcolm's glare; for surely this figure before her was the true Reaper, with his black coat and hook at his wrist dripping crimson and dark eyes that cut straight to the deepest parts of her soul. He had dark skin and tired eyes, his mouth on the verge of a mournful frown. She was terrified and enthralled all at once; Sophie stared up at this man, mouth slightly open, her words caught in her throat. He was overwhelming in his presence; he reeked of magnificence, sickly-sweet.

"May I come closer?" He asked, and his voice filled the room without ever rising above a gentle murmur.

"Yes," Sophie said, half-dreaming. His footsteps pulled her away from the dreaminess; but now he was close, and she looked up to meet his gaze.

"Are you afraid?" It was a threat spoken with softness and warmth; she couldn't understand.

"Yes," she said, her answer small.

"Do you know who I am?" He asked, taking one more step forward. She didn't try to back away. She didn't even try to get off the ground.

"Are you Death?" she whispered, and the man smiled, a soft smile as he tilted her chin up with the curve of his hook. It was cold against her skin, a shock against the warmth that had thickened the air around her.

"Only if you will allow me to be," he said, never losing his smile. Sophie stared at him and swallowed, trying to push through the heaviness in her mind, through the fog he'd somehow breathed into her thoughts. "My name, Sophie. Do you know it?" She found one ray of clarity in her mind and grasped onto it, squeezing her knee.

"I don't want to die," she whispered, "please."

"I won't kill you," His words echoed in her head, and she sobbed once, a short and painful gasp in her heavy throat. "unless you invite me. My name, Sophie. Do you know it?"

"I don't know," she said, aware that tears were falling down her cheeks but too lost to understand fully that she was crying. "I'm sorry, I really don't know." Why was she crying? She was afraid, yes, but something else filled her eyes with tears; until this moment, kneeling before this man who was too much to be a man, she had never truly known awe.

"Find it." It was a whisper now, urgent as the gleam in his eyes. He leaned forward and she could feel the tug of the hook's smooth metal on her chin. She lifted her head with it, the rest of her following, until only her knees and her feet touched the ground. "Find my name and call me into your world, Sophie, as you have let me into your soul. I will be waiting for you."

"Why?" She whispered, the only question she could find. His smile was so gentle and inviting as he pushed a strand of hair from her face that for a moment she almost smiled back at him. "Why me?" He didn't answer, instead leaning forward and pressing a kiss to her forehead. Blood trickled down his hook onto her throat, and her skin was torn between the way it made her skin tingle and the softness of his lips, tender in a way she had long forgotten. Sophie closed her eyes, and he pulled away.

"Look for me, Sophie. There is so much waiting for you to discover. And do me this one favor."

"What?" She asked, eyes half-opening, and she looked at him one more time through a haze of golden yellow.

"Wake up." _  
_

* * *

Her entire body seized, and then the muscles relaxed and clarity came rushing back to her, the honey-fog dispersed. She was still on her knees, her jeans soaked by the puddle she had fallen into, and she was astonishingly cold. More concerning was that she was alone. Her eyes flitted to the ground.

No footprints. She scrambled to her feet and stepped back. She stared. All she could do was stare at the empty space before her.

"Where are you?" She called into the emptiness, but of course nothing answered. "Who are you?" Her cheeks were still wet, and she wiped the tears away with her sleeve, trying to catch her breath. He was gone, just like that, not a trace left behind but her own shock. Sophie looked down at the puddle, staring at her own reflection.

What had _that_ been?

She swallowed, mentally grasping at the fresh and somehow foggy memory. She remembered the man - black, tall, deep-voiced with dark eyes. There had been something strangely sad in those eyes, or what memory she had of them, like an unspoken tragedy followed his footsteps. She remembered falling to her knees, but she wasn't sure why, and she remembered the hook that had been cold and - and this was what worried her - comforting against her scarred skin.

She remembered being awed.

There was something she couldn't explain in that. Physically there was nothing awe-inducing about him. Certainly the hook and his rotted wrist were a haunting sight, but those were aw _ful,_ not awe- _inspiring_ _._ She blinked, shaking her head, trying to understand why she had looked at a man and thought she'd seen something like a god. She got to her feet and looked ahead of her; and all at once she realized she was facing the same corridor she had when she took the picture. The whole building, in fact, had simplified; the maze of before was gone, in its place a skeleton of simpler, more honest architecture. She walked towards the wall in the dark, the one where _he_ had been painted; the colors were faded and the stone eroded, but she could see lines, the suggestion of an artwork lost to time.

Her phone buzzed. She answered it with a shaking hand.

"Hello?"

"Sophie, it's Marcus. I just got out of questioning. You want to join me and some of the others for dinner? We all need to get our minds off the murder." She couldn't see him, but could imagine the shudder nonetheless. "Yeesh!"

"Yes, that sounds good," she said, swallowing and forcing her knees to hold steady as she started to walk away from this strange den. "Where are you all going? I'll meet you there. I need to make a quick stop to the library first."

"We're getting burgers, I'll text you the details. What do you need at the library? Candle-making books?"

"Not really," she said, stepping into the sunlight and drinking in the city air, "I just wanted to learn some history about this part of the city."

 _I need to know his name._ The seed of curiosity, of fascination, had been planted, thought she wasn't sure why. His name - it had seemed so urgent to him that she know it. She _needed_ to know it, even if that hook still gleamed hungrily in her mind's eye. He'd said he wouldn't hurt her.

 _Unless I ask._ What was that supposed to mean?

As she walked to the bus stop and took one last glance at the building, her stomach turned just a little, burning with the need to be at ease, the need to know.

* * *

 _So I love writing my usual stuff, and I'm never gonna drop Hellraiser as my main fandom... but I think this is some of the best writing I've ever done here. Hopefully I'll get the next update done sooner rather than later. Let me know what you think!_


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